“Action!” (click for BIG image) Photo: Dallas Police Museum
by Paula Bosse
Need to hire a bunch of movie extras who look comfortable toting rifles? When Hollywood came to Dallas and environs in the fall of 1966 to shoot the movie “Bonnie and Clyde,” they found plenty of law enforcement officers happy to don a pair of overalls and add some local color to their production.
I came across this photo on the Dallas Police Department Museum Facebook page. One of the comments under the photo: “I remember when all the overtime slots were allowed (paid by the film company)…. I recognize Chief Curry and the other officers.” Another person commented that an ex-DPD cop told him that he was in the movie, dressed as a farmer, chasing a car across an open field.
Did you have an Uncle Earl who was on the DPD force in 1966? There’s a chance he might be in the movie. Hell, he might be in this photo!
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Sources & Notes
Photo from the Dallas Police Department Museum Facebook page.
Read the Preston Hollow Advocate article “A Criminal Record: Dallas Police Department Museum,” here.
Last Tuesday, my friend Carlos Guajardo and I were each asked to present a favorite vinyl album at the Tuesday Night Record Club, a monthly event organized by Brian McKay and held at the historic Texas Theatre. My choice was a French import called Public Execution by Mouse and the Traps, a collection of the Texas band’s singles issued during their fairly short career (roughly 1965 to 1970). I bought this at a time when all of my disposable income was going to alternative record stores Metamorphosis and VVV, and I feel fairly certain that I bought this album at Metamorphosis. ’60s garage rock may be my favorite genre of music, and Texas garage rock is, for whatever reason, usually the best.
Mouse and the Traps was a band formed in Tyler, Texas in 1965, with Ronnie Weiss (whose nickname was “Mouse”) on vocals and guitar, Bugs Henderson on lead guitar, David Stanley on bass, Ken “Nardo” Murray on drums, and Jerry Howell on keyboards. Even though most of the band members grew up in Tyler and almost all of their singles were recorded there (recordings produced by the great Robin Hood Brians, who was only a couple of years older than the band), the band pretty much moved to Dallas when they began to get a lot of airplay on local stations, notably KLIF. I actually always thought they were a Dallas band, and, damn it, I’m still considering them a Dallas band.
Mouse and the Traps toured around the state feverishly, playing clubs, colleges, parties, and even proms. There were occasional forays beyond Texas, but, for the most part, they remained a (very popular) regional band. Their first single — the unapologetically Dylan-esque “A Public Execution,” was released at the end of 1965 on the Fraternity label; it was their only record to show up on the Billboard charts, as a “bubbling under” track, not quite reaching the Top 100. After a couple of years, Bugs Henderson (who later became “guitar legend Bugs Henderson”) left the band and was replaced by Bobby Delk. Their personnel history is a little fuzzy, but I think Bugs re-joined the band briefly before the group finally disbanded sometime in 1970, after releasing a series of well-regarded singles and after almost five years of endless live dates. For most bands that had found little commercial success, that would have been the last most people would have heard of them. But most bands weren’t “Nugget” bands.
In 1972, Lenny Kaye included Mouse and the Traps on his revered (and influential) “Nuggets” compilation, propelling the band from “slowly fading memory” to “newly appreciated cult band” and introducing them to a whole new international audience. The band is now regarded as “proto-punk” and an important Texas garage band.
Their garage recordings are probably the most admired, but they dabbled in every ’60s style imaginable, including psychedelia, folk rock, breezy pop, and West Coast country, with hints of Dylan, The Beatles, The Yardbirds, Them, Donovan, and the Sir Douglas Quintet. There’s even a “Get Smart”-inspired novelty song in there. My favorite song of theirs, “Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice,” is generally considered their finest single, assuring them a place in the pantheon of great garage songs. The stinging, electrifying guitar of Bugs Henderson is fantastic.
The band re-formed for several reunion shows over the years, but, sadly, Bugs Henderson died in 2012. No more reunion shows featuring the original line-up.
As far as the Dallas connection during the height of their career, there is precious little I’ve been able to find, as far as contemporary local photos, ads, or newspaper mentions. Despite the cultural revolution which began with the explosive arrival of the Beatles to the U.S. in 1964, “teenage” music in the ’60s was not taken seriously enough at the time to warrant much coverage in the major newspapers.
One of the few mentions of the band I found was as a support act on a Sonny and Cher show at the Fair Park Music Hall in early 1966. Also on the bill: The Outcasts from San Antonio, and Scotty McKay from Dallas (who can be seen performing two pretty good songs in a clip from one of Dallas director Larry Buchanan’s “schlock” movies, “Creature of Destruction,” here).
Feb., 1966
They also appeared on the TV music show “Sump’n Else” “Upbeat” (in 1968, post-Bugs). (Thanks to Jim for pointing out in the comments that these two color photos actually show the band on the Cleveland-based syndicated teen show “Upbeat,” hosted by Don Webster. TV listings show that the band appeared on the show in April 1968, along with the Boxtops and several other performers.)
Photos: Robin Hood Brians
They also played a memorable show at Louanns in 1966 where they appeared on a double-bill as two separate bands. In 1966 Jimmy Rabbit, a popular DJ on KLIF who was a big supporter of the band, asked them to perform as his backing band on a (great!) recording of “Psychotic Reaction” — a very early cover (perhaps the first) of the song by the Count Five. The song was recorded in Tyler by Robin Hood Brians with Rabbit on vocals and was released under the name Positively Thirteen O’clock. Unsurprisingly, with Rabbit being a DJ on the top station in town, it became a huge local hit. Ken “Nardo” Murray talked about it in a 1988 interview (read the full interview here). Click for larger image.
Fort Worth Star-Telegram, May 17, 1988
And here they are at Louanns, with Rabbit at the mic, backed up by Dave Stanley, Bugs Henderson (he has “Bugs” and a picture of Bugs Bunny on his guitar!), and Jerry Howell:
If anyone has any Dallas-related photos or memorabilia of Mouse and the Traps, I’d love to see them! I’d also love to hear from people who saw them perform in the ’60s.
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Billboard, May 21, 1966
Waco Tribune Herald, Aug. 11, 1966
Grand Prairie Daily News, May 9, 1968
Weimar Mercury, Jan. 16, 1969
North Texas State University newspaper, Feb. 7, 1969
Waco Tribune Herald, Aug. 30, 1969
Waco Citizen, April 13, 1970
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Sources & Notes
A few Mouse and the Traps tidbits:
The band was originally called “Mouse.” “The Traps” was added when the second single, “Maid of Sugar, Maid of Spice” came out in 1966.
The “Henderson” listed as co-writer with Ronnie Weiss of a few of the early Mouse and the Traps songs (including the first two singles) was not Bugs Henderson (who was born Harry Fisher Henderson but was known as “Buddy” in the pre-“Bugs” days) — it was Knox Henderson, a high school pal from Tyler, seen below from a 1955 John Tyler High School (Tyler, TX) yearbook.
More on the band — including photos and newspaper articles — can be found here. Also included is additional information on Robin Hood Brians who has produced artists as diverse as ZZ Top, the Five Americans, James Brown, David Houston, and John Fred and His Playboy Band (whose “Judy In Disguise” knocked the Beatles out of the #1 spot on the national charts).
Legendary sportswriter Blackie Sherrod died yesterday at the age of 96. My father was not a follower of sports, but I remember he read Blackie Sherrod’s columns because, along with other great, larger-than-life, and exceptionally talented DFW sportswriters such as Bud Shrake, Dan Jenkins, and Gary Cartwright, Blackie was — for want of a better word — a “literary” journalist whose style transcended his subject matter. His writing appealed to everyone who enjoyed and appreciated well-written and caustically funny forays into, around, over, and under the world of sports. Sports fans — and other sportswriters — loved the guy. And so did everyone else.
In the December 1975 issue of Texas Monthly, Larry L. King (forever known as the man who made more money from the best little whorehouse in Texas than any of the girls who plied their trade there) wrote a fantastic profile of Blackie (“The Best Sportswriter in Texas”), in which he described Blackie Sherrod as being “the most plagiarized man in Texas.” Sportswriters around the state routinely stole all of Blackie’s best lines and inserted them, unattributed, into their own columns. King himself admits he was one of the worst offenders. The lengthy profile is great. Great. Read it here.
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UPDATE: Also, this is a great 9-minute film produced by KERA in the 1970s in which Blackie talks about his career, past and present.
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Sources & Notes
Video is from the KERA Collection, G. William Jones Film & Video Collection, Hamon Arts Library, Southern Methodist University; the permanent link on YouTube is here.
Watch a Dallas Morning News-produced video tribute to Blackie Sherrod from 2013.
The Dallas Morning News obituary — “Legendary News Sportswriter Blackie Sherrod Dies at 96” — written by Kevin Sherrington, is here.
Several of Blackie’s Sherrod’s books can be purchased online, here.
Moments after I posted yesterday’s photo of the Dallas Times Herald lobby, I read that Blackie had died. He must have walked through that lobby thousands of times. That was an odd bit of synchronicity.
The image above is from a Six Flags Over Texas postcard. The description on the back reads:
Geometric Patterns — Mexican Section Multi-colored lighting effects reveal a fascinating and beautiful picture of the Canopied Garden Walkway leading into the Mexican Section at this new 105-acre $10,000,000 family entertainment center.
Here it is in the daytime, still kind of attention-grabbing, but nowhere near as cool-looking:
I just wanted to post this Six Flags picture I’d never seen and move along, but why not add a few more postcards showing attractions in this part of the theme park: the “Mexican Section.”
There was the Fiesta Train (which I was surprised to see was originally called Ferrocarril Fiesta), which was topped with colorful sombreros and chugged by all sorts of “festive” scenes which might seem a little culturally eyebrow-raising today.
There were … dancing tamales. DANCING TAMALES! (Designed by Peter Wolf.)
Dancing Tamales — Mexican Section One of the most popular of the many colorful and comical animations on the Fiesta Train ride, this group of Dancing Tamales perform to the gay strains of Mexican music that fills the air.
Here is an interesting article about what visitors to the brand new amusement park could expect to encounter on their visit to the Mexican Section, written by the Six Flags promotion department (click for larger image).
Six Flags Gazette, Aug. 6, 1961
And, no, I couldn’t find a 1961 photo of the sombrero ride!
UPDATE: Found one (from 1965)!
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Sources & Notes
Sombrero ride photo is from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Collection, University of Texas at Arlington Libraries, Special Collections — more on this photo is here.
Info about the Six Flags Railroad is here; more about the Ferrocarril Fiesta Train is here.
Apparently those tamales (with a face lift) are still around? I LOVE THESE GUYS!
Above, a photo showing the block of Cadiz Street between what was then the S. Pearl Expressway and S. Central Expressway (now Cesar Chavez). The view is southwesterly, with the (oddly placed) billboards facing toward Pearl.
I’m sure most people considered such a view urban blight in 1959 when this photo was taken, but (I know I sound like a broken record…), I will always prefer this seedy and run-down version of the farmers market area to the current, relentlessly sterilized, pre-fab, insta-city which took its place. By 1961, this little stretch of businesses had been leveled for a parking lot, which, frankly, was probably more of an eyesore than a ramshackle domino parlor with peeling paint.
Below, a photo taken in the same block, about a year earlier. It’s not quite as interesting to look at as the top photo, but it does show that this was a working neighborhood, where vegetable crates frequently spilled into the streets as part of the day’s activities.
Here’s a map from 1962, when the area was a thriving wholesale and retail produce district.
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Sources & Notes
Both photos are from the Dallas Farmers Market/Henry Forschmidt Collection, Dallas Municipal Archives, via the Portal to Texas History; the top one can be found here, the bottom one, here.
See other Flashback Dallas posts about the Dallas Farmers Market here — every time I see these great old photos I just shake my head and wish I’d been around to see this part of the city when it was at its grittiest.
One of the things I like best about looking through old high school and college yearbooks is seeing the ads in the back — especially the ads that feature students. Here are a whole bunch of ads from the 1960, 1962, and 1963 North Dallas High School annuals, with most of the ads placed by businesses in the Oak Lawn, McKinney Avenue, and Little Mexico areas surrounding the school. Let’s take a walk down memory lane, shall we? (Ads and photos are larger when clicked.)
Above, Friendly Chevrolet at Lemmon and Inwood. I bet the owner was grimacing as he saw those girls perched — gingerly or not — on that brand new Corvette convertible!
1963
The Cole and Haskell Drug Store, at 3121 N. Haskell — right across the street from the NDHS campus — was no doubt thrilled to be so close to its major source of income, the teenager.
1962
1963
1963
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Lots of gas and service stations were nearby. Like Dick Prather Fina Service, at 3106 Blackburn, with the school peeking over the roof.
1960
And L. V. Butcher’s Cosden Service Station, at 3519 McKinney. (I love the slouch of the mechanic.)
1963
And the Ragan Service Station, at 4201 McKinney.
1963
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Plant and flower enthusiasts were invited to stop by Lena’s Flowers and Aquariums, at 3112 Cole. …For flowers. And aquariums.
1963
What Tropical Gardens at Cole and Haskell lacked in the way of aquariums, it all but made up for in tropicalness. (Might as well grab a coke at the drug store since you’re right there.)
1963
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Those who needed their hair extra poufy for the spring formal might have found themselves at the Capitan Beauty Shop, 1808 N. Henderson (now that’s a photo!).
1963
Seekers of Asian foods and/or “party favors for all occasions” could head over to Jung’s Oriental Foods & Gifts at 2519 N. Fitzhugh. (This is the most unexpected ad I came across.)
1963
Maybe you just needed a hammer. Where else would you go but Elliott’s Hardware, at its original location at 5308 Maple.
1963
Phillips’ Variety Store at 4442 Maple was probably a good place to get scented talcum powder, a bouncy ball, a bag of peppermints, or a new charm for the charm bracelet.
1963
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What do high school kids love more than bowling and going to the movies? Apparently there was a movie theater on McKinney Avenue that I’m only just learning about — The Plaza, at 3806 McKinney.
1962
The 24-hour Expressway Bowl was at 5910 N. Central Expressway. (I’m not sure those girls have on the proper footwear.)
1963
But the place you really wanted to go was the Cotton Bowling Palace on Inwood at Lemmon. When it opened in 1959 (complete with a heavily promoted personal appearance by Dallas gal Jayne Mansfield), it was breathlessly described as “a mixture of the Copacabana, the Taj Mahal and the MGM Grand.” Imagine bowling in the Taj Mahal! Heck, you could even get a haircut between frames.
1962
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The biggest bang for the buck, nostalgia-wise, is almost always going to be places related to food. Here are a few restaurants and burger places which were probably frequent destinations for North Dallas students and their families. Like Spanish Village at 3839 Cedar Springs.
1963
1960
The fondly remembered China Clipper, at 3930 McKinney.
1960
K’s — where you could get “sandwiches of all kinds” — at 3317 Oak Lawn.
1960
Hay-Way Bar-B-Q & Groceries, at 5418 Denton Drive.
1963
A burger and malt joint with the wonderful name of Frezo, at 4531 Maple. (I WOULD GO TO SOMEPLACE CALLED “FREZO.”)
1962
The famed elephant-on-top Jumbo Drive-In, owned by Clarence and Leonard Printer. The location in this ad was at 6412 Lemmon. See what the Haskell location looked like, here.
1960
The legendary Prince of Hamburgers at 5200 Lemmon.
1960
The not-quite-as-legendary Luke’s Fine Foods at 2410 Shorecrest, owned by L. L. Blasingame.
1963
Yee’s Restaurant at 5404 Lemmon, owned by B. L. Yee.
1963
And, of course, Pancho’s — this location at 1609 McKinney. Almost all of the buildings that housed the businesses listed above are long gone, but this building is still hanging in there. It’s next to the downtown El Fenix and is now the home of Meso Maya. I have to admit, I got a happy little jolt to see this building today, still looking pretty much the same as it did in this 1963 ad.
1963
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Sources & Notes
All ads from the 1960, 1962, and 1963 editions of the North Dallas High School yearbook, The Viking.
See photos of students and high school activities from these same yearbooks in the post “North Dallas High School, The Pre-Beatles Era,” here.
Today, a few random photos from the 1960, 1962, and 1963 yearbooks of North Dallas High School.
The top photo (from 1962) is my favorite, because, had I not known what part of town this photo was taken in, I would never have guessed. I’m still not 100% sure, but I think this shows Cole Avenue running alongside NDHS. The Cole and Haskell Drug Store (Coke sign) was on the corner of … Cole and Haskell, but things have been so Uptown-ified that this area is now almost completely unrecognizable from even 20 years ago. At least the school and Cole Park remain (mostly) unchanged.
So, a few moments in the life of NDHS students in the days just before The Beatles and Vietnam. (All photos are larger when clicked.)
From 1960, majorettes practicing, with batons and headscarves — two things one doesn’t encounter often these days.
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From 1962, cheerleader Gene Martinez with the school’s bulldog mascot, Duchess.
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The rest of the photos are from 1963, when most of the girls had the Laura Petrie flip hairstyle. (Seen here are Suzy DeGaw and Olga Delgado.)
As far as the boys, an alarming number of them sported haircuts like the ones below (although these two seem to be a bit on the extreme side — most were shorter) — it’s a sort of early-’60s version of the ’80s’ Flock of Seagulls hair-do where you look back on it and shake your head in wonderment. I’m not exactly sure what “butch wax” is for, but I’m thinking it’s for this. (Pictured here are Jody Chenoweth and Robert Paul Reid.)
Girls “gabbed.”
Boys loitered.
Girls had beauty pageants (and wore a lot of plaid).
And boys practiced shooting.
North Dallas had their very own rock and roll band — “The Misters,” headed by the enormously popular Jesse Lopez (younger brother of Trini Lopez, who went to Crozier Tech). (Morning sock hops?!)
In fact, The Misters won the high school combo contest at the State Fair several times. And speaking of High School Day at the fair….
And back on campus, I don’t know who you are, Rufus Jara, but I nominate you as Coolest-Looking NDHS Student of 1963. (Caption from the yearbook: “Rufus Jara appears to be bothered by the light in the lunch room.”)
These last two photos leave a lot to be desired in quality (I did my best with yellowed paper and a broken book spine), but I think it’s interesting to see what the street looked like in front of the school, and on McKinney Avenue, to the left. Again, not recognizable today.
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Detail from a 1962 city map
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All photos from The Viking, the North Dallas High School yearbooks from 1960, 1962, and 1963.
More from these yearbooks: see a LOT of ads in the post “Ads For Businesses Serving the North Dallas High School Area — Early 1960s,” here. Several feature NDHS students.
One of my major failings as a Dallasite is that I don’t know Oak Cliff. Like at all. Every time I go over there, I get lost. I can’t remember my family ever going to Oak Cliff when I was a kid, except to visit the zoo. This explains why I had no idea how important a cultural landmark Austin’s Barbecue was when I posted a bunch of Oak Cliff ads the other day. That post has been shared hundreds and hundreds of times now and, inevitably, the only thing people mention — and rhapsodize about — is Austin’s Barbecue. …I had no idea!
The famed BBQ joint at the northeast corner of Illinois Avenue and Hampton Road opened in 1949 as B & G Barbecue but soon became known as Bull Pen Barbecue, run jointly by owners Bert Bowman and Austin Cook. In 1956 or 1957, another Bull Pen opened in Arlington. After Oak Cliff went dry (a dark day for many Oak Cliffites), Bowman — who firmly believed that BBQ and beer were a match made in heaven — left for Arlington and Cook stayed in Oak Cliff and changed the restaurant’s name to Austin’s Barbecue. (“Bull Pen Barbecue” was still appearing in ads as late as Oct. 1957 — the official name changeover seems to have happened in 1958.)
1967 Sunset High School yearbook
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The following memory of starting the business was apparently written by Austin Cook in 1990:
Dear Family & Friends,
I will try to tell you a little more about my being in the restaurant business. We borrowed $10,000 and bought out some one and it was B and G Barbecue. You see I always spell out Barbecue because when I went in business they hadn’t started abbreviating it like it is today.
After we had been there awhile we changed the name to The Bull Pen. Our slogan was “Come in and Shoot the Bull with Austin and Bert.” We used that name until they voted beer out of Oak Cliff. That really set us back, but maybe it was the best thing for us. We put another place in Arlington and that place was going pretty good. My partner wanted to get rid of the place in Oak Cliff. I traded him my part of the one in Arlington for his part in the one in Oak Cliff. Everyone said I was crazy.
When we bought that first place it was way out in the country, but they were building a bunch of houses not too far away. There was an airport across the street from the place. They kept talking about building a shopping center where the airport was. I remember the first day we ran a hundred dollars, and I thought we would never make it.
We started making money and we paid that ten thousand dollars back and we drew fifty dollars a week just like I was making in the grocery store. We started out with a barbecue sandwich and a hamburger. Then we started adding different things until we had a menu. We started getting those workers in the houses, and the business took off. We had beer also to go with the barbecue. My mother wasn’t too happy about that, but Dad said if that was the way I wanted to make my living it would be all right. In about a year or two we had a customer make us up a menu and we put in Barbecue plates for one dollar and twenty five cents. When I left they we were getting $4.99 for them. After I left I think they went to over seven dollars.
They always told me that you weren’t a success until you were in debt a hundred thousand dollars, and I went to the bank and borrowed all they would let me have. Then I went to my landlord and sold him the idea that I wanted to improve his property, and he loaned me the balance I needed to remodel, and I built a restaurant that held a hundred and twenty-five. Many times I was almost broke and didn’t know what I was going to do, but something always happened and I came out of it.
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Both the Bull Pen in Arlington and Austin’s in Oak Cliff were successful and long-lived. Austin Cook retired at the end of 1993, and the business was taken over by his stepson, John Zito who had already been working at the restaurant for several years. Austin’s Barbecue closed in July, 2000, and the building was demolished soon after, replaced with an Eckerd drug store (now a CVS). Bert Bowman (born Glynbert Lee Bowman) died in 1989 at the age of 66; Austin O. Cook died at in 2006 at 86. And now I kind of feel like I know them, and I’m really sorry I never sampled their sandwiches.
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Below, a Bowman and Cook timeline (most pictures and clippings are larger when clicked).
Austin Cook, Sunset High School, 1937
Before Cook and Bowmen met — probably around 1947 — each had been dabbling in different businesses. In early 1947, Cook leased a Clover Farm Store building at 203 N. Ewing and opened the Libby & Cook grocery with partner Lendal C. Libby.
February, 1947
1947 Dallas directory
Bert Bowman worked there as a meat-cutter.
1947 Dallas directory
The grocery store was in business at least into 1949, the year that Bowman and Cook decided to ditch the groceries and start their own business at 2321 W. Illinois, in a part of Oak Cliff which was just starting to be developed. Their BBQ place was originally called B & G Barbecue, which — according to Cook’s letter above — was the name of the restaurant he and Bowman bought out. I guess they felt it was easier to keep the name for awhile.
1951 Dallas directory
The name “Bull Pen Barbecue” didn’t come until later. In fact, the first appearance of the Bull Pen name associated with this address doesn’t show up in local newspaper archives until a want-ad placed in the summer of 1952.
August, 1952
A probably related “Bull Pen No. 2” opened in South Dallas in 1953. It appears to have been very short-lived.
October, 1953
By the fall of 1957, Cook and Bowman had opened another Bull Pen — this one in Arlington, and this one a success.
September, 1957
And then Oak Cliff went dry, the worst thing that could happen to a restaurant that sold a lot of beer. Similar businesses which relied heavily on beer sales began to desert Oak Cliff. Bowman did not think their original drive-in could survive, but Cook disagreed. Bowman sold his half-interest in the Oak Cliff location to Cook, and Cook sold his half-interest in the Arlington location to Bowman. Cook changed the name of his now solely-owned restaurant to Austin’s Barbecue, and his success continued, despite the fact that he could no longer sell beer. He was doing well enough that, in 1961, he opened a second location, on Harry Hines across from Parkland Hospital (a location which lasted through 1964).
1962 Dallas directory
1963 Dallas directory
By 1963, Austin’s was a well-established teen hang-out and wisely placed ads in Oak Cliff high school annuals. Apparently everyone went there!
In 1964, Cook — known as “Big Daddy” — opened another restaurant, this one called Big Daddy’s Grill.
June, 1964
August, 1966
The restaurant was a bona fide Oak Cliff landmark, and Cook was an active participant in community business affairs. Below, a detail of a photo showing Cook as a member of the Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce.
late 1960s
Cook participated in a series of Oak Cliff Chamber of Commerce campaigns and even included oddities like “Come eat Austin’s barbecue… and then visit Red Bird Industrial Park” in his ads. Make a day of it!
Color postcard at the top found on Pinterest, here.
The letter from Austin Cook was quoted on the DHS Phorum, here. More from the Phorum on The Bull Pen/Austin’s is here.
More can be found in the Dallas Morning News archives in the following stories:
“Austin’s Bar-B-Q Grows With Oak Cliff” (DMN, Aug. 14, 1966)
“Barbecue To Go — Staff, Customers Mourn Closing of Oak Cliff Institution” (DMN, July 13, 2000)
“Closed But Not Forgotten — Oak Cliff Eatery Marks Half-Century of Barbecue With Memorable Auction” (DMN, Aug. 27, 2000)
“John P. Zito — Operated Oak Cliff Landmark Austin’s Barbecue For 19 Years” by Joe Simnacher (DMN, Oct. 14, 2003)
Read the obituaries of Bert Bowman (1989) and Austin O. Cook (2006) here.
The Oak Cliff Advocate article “A Look Back at Austin’s Barbecue” by Gayla Brooks is here (with tons of memories from readers in the comments).
Not mentioned in this post is the connection of Officer J. D. Tippit (who moonlighted as a keeper of the peace at Austin’s) and other tangential/coincidental associations to the Kennedy assassination. It’s well documented elsewhere. Google is your friend.
Yesterday I received a comment on a previous post I wrote about the first official reenactment of the Kennedy assassination, and that got me to wondering if that film was online anywhere. The film was made as part of the Secret Service investigation and was filmed in Dealey Plaza and in the Texas School Book Depository; the motorcade sequence was filmed on November 27, 1963, just five days after the assassination. Even though my knowledge of the events of November 22 is fairly limited (and what I do know is mostly due to osmosis), just growing up here you kind of feel you’ve seen everything connected with the assassination. But I’d never seen this film or the one made a few months later with the production assistance of local TV station KRLD, which included much of the same footage. Apparently, the original film had not been made public until fairly recently.
It’s very interesting to watch, and the fact that there is no sound makes it appropriately eerie. I have to admit that I was most interested in seeing the footage of downtown streets. And the interior of the Texas School Book Depository beyond just the “sniper’s nest” we always see. (I can now say I’ve sneaked a peek inside the depository’s employee lunchroom.)
So here are the two films. The first one was made by the Secret Service, with the Dealey Plaza reenactment filmed on Nov. 27, 1963. It has no sound. I thought it was interesting, but a lot of people might find it a little dull and repetitive. Below this video is one which uses this footage to lay out the government’s findings, with lots of details and no-nonsense narration by KRLD’s Jim Underwood. (I’m not sure why — or for whom — this educational film was made. It doesn’t seem to have been screened for the public.) The silent film has more footage, but the narrated film is easier to follow. And below that are screenshots from the government’s “reconstruction.” (UPDATE, Jan. 2024: The two videos I had originally linked have been removed from YouTube. I’m linking a video I found recently below.)
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Below, a few screenshots from the government footage. The one at the top of this post shows Special Agent John Joe Howlett sitting at the sixth-floor window, as if holding a rifle.
Below, Elm St. looking east from Dealey Plaza, with the white Records Building at center right.
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The one-car-two-motorcycle motorcade turning from Main onto Houston St. Looking south from … you know where.
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Houston St. looking north, with the School Book Depository on the left and a disconcertingly empty space straight ahead.
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A nice artsy shot of the book depository and the old John Deere Building.
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Camera with “scope” attachment.
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Windows, boxes, looking toward the west end of the building from the “nest” end of the sixth floor.
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A trip to the second-floor lunchroom, with its vending machines which are, apparently, important in Lee Harvey Oswald’s alibi. These images show Special Agent Talmadge Bailey walking past the vending machines and sitting at a table.
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Sources & Notes
See Dallas Times Herald photographs that were shot while the Dealey Plaza “reenacting” was going on in my previous post, “The First JFK Assassination Reenactment — 1963,” here. (As for the comment that started me off on this, I’m still not sure whether the cameramen in the car are KRLD employees or not.)
“Action!” (click for BIG image) Photo: Dallas Police Museum
